WordPress 2.9 Oh so fine – Is It?

Yes it is. I’ve upgraded, No Glitches

I’ve upgraded 4 blogs at this point. Last night, late, I pulled the plug and updated a couple of the kids. (The little kids, sorry to say, which are easier to sacrifice to progress) The kids were breathing easy and on their own last night.

This morning I was greeted with an email from a Lab Rat that said he pulled the string last night and found several of his beloved plugins were not compatible with 2.9. WARNING ENOUGH FOR ME.

I don’t know which plugins, or if they blog itself had been updated recently to 2.8.6. So for the Lab and the Tucson blog I instituted:

“Standard Upgrade Procedures”

Back up the database from my hosting package (I never use the WP Backup plugins or export anymore)

FTP Access up and running (Check)

Logged in the the blog on only one browser (Check)

Click on Auto Upgrade and hold breath (Check, Double Check)

“Upgrade to 2.9 Successful” (Check, we will see)

Open the blog on another tab (Front end what everyone sees) Inspect (Check)

Go to the Plugin page check for plugins that need to be upgraded (Check)

Open the Editor and write a short post (Check)

Import an image into a post, add a caption, save draft, preview (Check)

Add a comment (Check)

Upgrade the rest of the blogs and do the same procedures (This one is for me, Check)

Almost everything seems to be functioning normally.

I did notice one small glitch, but not sure it is related to 2.9. I imported an image and added a caption. The caption didn’t appear in the post. I opened the image and added the caption back in. It stuck this time. Not sure what happened there but thought I’d mention it.

A plugin here at the lab I have never used “Custom Post Templates” which required creating the templates (something I never did) caused an error below the editor. I deactivated the plugin and all error messages went away.

Plugin Compatibility Checker

I did a lot of searching this morning for a compatibility check site like when we upgraded to 2.8. I couldn’t find one. Not sure why not. Unless this one was believed by the dev team to have little impact on plugins and their code.

2.8 changed the way widgets are handled. That was a major change to existing architecture. It broke a lot of plugins

2.9 added basic image editing, a trash can instead of straight to delete, easier embed functionality, a few organizational changes of buttons.

Most of the changes in 2.9 were additions which is why I believe most plugins weren’t effected.

I have 89 plugins at the Lab, 49 are active, 23 say they have upgrades. It was 31 before I started writing this post. The “mission critical” plugins that had updates were updated. All is working fine.

All-In-One-SEO Canonical functionality

This update mentioned the built in canonical feature in 2.9 and recommended anyone using this in All-In-One-SEO continue to do so. I agree. Part of my “If it isn’t broken don’t fix it” mentality.

Sound the all Clear to Upgrade to 2.9

With warnings:

Be sure you have been upgrading through the 2.8 upgrades (it will go smoother) If not, I would recommend you increment up to 2.9. Make SURE YOU BACKUP YOUR DATABASE. And check things out once you do the upgrade.

Comments

And I triewd to upgrade and failed. There is at least one MAJOR requirement for 2.9 and that is that the MySQL DB must be at least 4.26. Well… I didn’t know that until after the successful upgrade failed to upgrade the DB.

Hey Dave, Speaking of the 2.9 upgrade I went to Dreamhost and finally found the back-up function. One click back-up is nice but I get to wait until they notify me it is complete …. and I get one backup per month (30 days).

I think I am going to wait until the backup is done AND until the 2.9 issues are sorted out before I have Randy do ours.

” Backup Your Entire Account

Below you can request a complete account backup of your entire DreamHost account. You may request a backup once every 30 days. ! Success! Your ENTIRE account is now scheduled to be backed up! Your account backup is currently scheduled and may take as long as several days. You will be emailed when it finishes!”

There are some frustrated people on that link (to say the least). I just brought up a new site with 2.9 (didn’t even think much about it). Copied over my plug-ins and themes. No problem on a fresh install. .-= Scott Ficek´s last blog ..Question: Is there typically a 1099 on a Short Sale =-.

Same here, using the auto upgrade went smooth. Every time I upgrade Wp, my biggest worry is that the theme and plugins won’t work anymore…I was lucky so far 🙂 .-= Mark´s last blog ..Federal Pell Grant =-.

Upgrading to 2.9 went well on most of my sites but the Studio Press Agent theme broke! Talk about a scary looking mess! I should have checked with the support site before I took the leap, it would have saved me some grief! But no, I pushed the button anyway.

Living dangerously has it’s rewards. There was a strong feeling of self-satisfaction when I studied up and figured out the fix.

When I upgraded to 2.9 the front end looked fine, but when I logged in to the dashboard there was line after line of error messages! It took me awhile to realize I could scrow down to the actual dashboard, but it too was “broken” as far as formatting.

The fix had something to do with the single Post Template Plugin not playing nice with WP 2.9. I downloaded the plugin and uploaded to the proper file.

The confusing part was the fact I am running an older version of the theme. All the instructions kept saying to “deactive” this plugin in the plugin panel. I kept looking and not finding it.

I almost called you Dave in a panic last night, but finally someone else figured it out on the StudioPress Forum. I read his fix and realized my problem was the same. Once I uploaded the new version of the plugin to the proper location, all was well again. (and I didn’t have to wake you with an SOS call last night!)

My plugin is located wp-content>themes>agent_20>plugins NOT wp-content>plugins like the new themes.

One issue you may find is in scheduling posts – there’s an easy fix and am writing about it now… Once my plugins had all released new versions – it was fine! (other than that) .-= Mike Mueller´s last blog ..Living Google? =-.

Looking forward to that information. I’ve tried scheduling posts in the past and never found it to be reliable. Sometimes they would post and other times the entire post would simply “Poof, disappear”. So it is something I never use. I know some live by scheduled posts. Let us know when the post is up. Thanks for dropping by the Lab.